Thornberry understands Starmer’s position but would love to get Corbyn back in PLP

Emily Thornberry has said she understands “entirely where Keir is coming from” on his decision not to restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn but added she would “love to get him back into the [Parliamentary] Labour Party”.

Asked during a Times Radio interview this afternoon whether she was keen to see the former leader rejoin the Labour benches, Thornberry said Corbyn’s statement had “undermined the Equality and Human Rights Commission report”.

The Shadow International Trade Secretary said: “I understand entirely where Keir is coming from on this. I think it is something that needs to be held under review and I think the chief whip has also written to Jeremy about this.

“We do need to recognise how much we failed and how we did not stand up for the Jewish community sufficiently strongly, and when there was a rise of antisemitism in the Labour Party, and when the EHRC report came out, I personally found it very distressing.”

She added: “I thought deeply about whether I had done enough and whether I could have done more. And I think that Keir was the same. I think that Jeremy should have also approached it in that spirit.

“Some of the things that he said undermined the EHRC report. And I think he needs to think about that and I think we need once more to apologise to the Jewish community and I think he needs to think about that too.

“I’d love to get him back into the Labour Party but I do think we need to get round this problem and hopefully it will get sorted out.”

Corbyn was suspended from the party after claiming that “the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons” in his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission report into Labour antisemitism.

The former Labour leader was readmitted as a member earlier this month, after consideration by a panel of five national executive committee members, but Starmer announced shortly afterwards that the whip would not be restored.

Chief whip Nick Brown informed the former party leader last week that the suspension of the Labour whip is set to last for three months pending a parliamentary investigation – though this will be kept “under review”.

The three-month timescale is not considered a hard deadline, and could be shorter or longer depending on events. Brown asked Corbyn on Monday to apologise and edit or delete his response to the report.